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Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Todd McFarlane: The Magnitude Of Sim's Accomplishment

Spawn #4 (Image Comics, 1992)Art by Dave Sim

CHRISTOPHER SHULGAN:

(from Saturday Night magazine, November 2003)

...in the 300-issue arc of Cerebus, Sim has exhibited a flair for his medium that few have matched; some still admire his gifts, despite how they feel about his politics. Peter Birkmore, co-owner of The Beguiling, a respected Toronto comics shop, calls Sim "one of the great talents of the latter half of the 20th Century." Asked to rank Sim in the pantheon of comic-book creators, Chester Brown pauses for a long moment. "Would he be in your top 20?" I ask, and Brown scoffs. "Absolutely," he says. "I'm just trying to figure out where I would put him in the top five."

"There's a tendency to dismiss Sim because he's become eccentric," says Todd McFarlane, who achieved fame in comicdom for his work on Spider-Man and would go on to become a co-founder of Image Comics (arguably the last decade's hottest independent company), a move McFarlane says was inspired by Sim. "Most people reading comics today, especially the 12 to 14-year olds, don't understand the magnitude of Sim's accomplishment," says McFarlane. "What he's done is unprecedented - he's crossed a bridge no one's ever crossed before..."